Katsukawa Shunshō was a Japanese painter and printmaker known for his ukiyo-e style, particularly his prints of Kabuki actors and Bijin-ga paintings – paintings of beautiful women. He started life as a student of both haiku and painting. Painting drew him to become a printmaker of the actors he mixed with in the floating world…

Following on from the last post on the theme of Japanese art, this is a woodblock print I photographed in the University of the Arts in Taitō City ward in Tokyo. The print is entitled Courtesan and a Handsome Youth, and is by Isoda Koryusai who has an interesting story. He was a samurai employed…

Ukiyo-e art meant ‘pictures of the floating world’. It was a way of seeing life as ever-changing, with bittersweet fleeting moments. Nothing was out of bounds – theatres, brothels, tea houses, labourers, travellers, artists, prostitutes, lovers. And always feeling that life was ephemeral and impossible to grasp. Ukiyo-e Style Ukiyo-e developed as Edo (the old…